Worth a mass of detail

No one wants to write a history of Paris from Caesar to Sarkozy. Histories that are largely political, which tell the story of the city’s expanding boundaries, endless wars and growing importance within France as a whole tend to be tedious. Most authors try to show that the history of Paris is special, involving a multiplicity of subjects and demanding sentiment and admiration.

Colin Jones is determined that his history should demonstrate the richness and complexity of the city. One gains the impression from his introduction that he will surprise the reader, for he begins with a quotation from the avant-garde writer George Perec who, in 1975, spent three days watching the Place Saint-Sulpice. The result is a catalogue of happenings: three children are taken to school, a 96 bus stops at the bus-stop, the church bell ceases to ring, a man with a pipe is observed, more buses come and go . . . Perec’s three days are counted as a single day of complete observation of what happens in a single square. But if one is to write the history of the whole of Paris one must enlarge one’s knowledge; so Jones sets out on his own counting exercises. He tells us not only how many streets, traffic-lights and bus-stops there are, but also pigeons, dogs and public conveniences for the 2.1 million residents.

His conclusion is that Paris’ history may be too diverse to be encompassed in a single narrative, but he expresses his desire to write such a history all the same. He continues to give us examples of ‘complexity’ — such as the fact that people living on one side of the Seine were reluctant to cross it — and while he claims to have told the story of Paris, as he puts it, ‘from earliest beginnings until tomorrow’ he also uses a device that allows him to escape from the strictness of chronological narrative and pursue a single topic over a longer period in a ‘feature box’, of which there are several in each chapter.